Don Robothom, ContributorTODAY THE campaign of Dr. Peter Phillips for the presidency of the People's National Party (PNP) and Prime Ministership is formally launched. As usual, much of the recent discussion of the political crisis in Jamaica has focused on which Moses is best able to lead us out of our Egypt. But if we really wish to make progress in our political culture, we need to look beneath the surface.
TRIUMPH OF THE LUMPEN
When we look more deeply at our political crisis, we see that our real challenge is to bring the stable social sectors from civil society back into active political life in Jamaica. What has happened to politics in Jamaica in the last 20 years is that it has been hijacked by the lumpen. Both Jamaican political parties are now dominated by the urban lumpen. If you make the mistake of attending a party conference, this reality will hit you frontally. The lumpen dominate the floor as well as the stage. Well-known exponents of lumpenism are in their ackee. The rambunctious spirit of lumpen culture strongly scented with ganja smoke suffuses all.
Of importance here is to note that not all lumpen are poor. All this exquisite German term refers to is unstable social fragments of no fixed abode from any social stratum. To be sure, the majority of our unstable social fragments are drawn from the urban poor. Many people confuse the lumpen and the working class as a whole a huge, monstrous and common mistake. The majority of the stable Jamaican working class does not live under the thumb of the dons in garrison communities. Many live in Portmore, for example.
But there are unstable social fragments with upper St. Andrew
abodes as well. We have quite a few well-off lumpen who are, in fact, the more dangerous variety. These well-off lumpen are usually found in the backrooms of both parties at the levels at which money is raised, contracts are dished out, dirty politics planned and blind eyes are turned. As usual, the PNP have the black well-off lumpen and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) have the 'red' well-off lumpen. Same difference. One very interesting feature of both political parties of late is that the well-off lumpen on both sides are clearly making a rather brazen bid to emerge from the shadows into the full glare of formal political leadership. Thus would the triumph of the lumpen forces in Jamaican politics be complete.
WELL-OFF LUMPEN
Well-off lumpen are the natural leaders of poor lumpen. Poor lumpen are the natural constituency of the well-off lumpen. They naturally gravitate to each other and form a mutual admiration society. Poor lumpen and rich lumpen have this in common: they are here to rip off the state and the society to the max. Extortion, intimidation and chicanery of every description are their modus operandi. They know no other.
The reason why so many of our political leaders are tied into garrison constituencies is because of the political retreat of the organised and established sectors of society. This has created the vacuum into which the lumpen have rushed. The result is that if you want to advance rapidly in any one of the two parties, you have to link up with the lumpen. This is the reality.
As in many other countries, a democratic and open Jamaican political culture depended on the active participation of stable social groups in the political and civic process. In our case, it was the entry of the organised middle classes into politics which led to the formation of the PNP in 1938 and the entry of the organised working class which led to the formation of the JLP in 1942. Later on, both parties acquired sections of the working and the middle classes. Organised sections of the business community, after a brief disastrous foray with their own political party, mainly joined the JLP. But an important minority of the business community especially in the fledgling manufacturing sector became major forces inside the PNP.
It is this active participation of these stable social groups in Jamaican politics which preserved its democratic character and contained tribalism and political violence. It is the withdrawal from politics of these very same groups the organised working class, the middle classes and the organised business community which has led to our present political crisis.
BREAKING THE LUMPEN STRANGLEHOLD
The issue of ending garrison politics is, therefore, really part of a broader issue. The bigger challenge before us is to break the stranglehold which the lumpen have over our political culture and institutions. The answer should be clear. Political renewal in Jamaica requires that the organised stable groups in Jamaican society re-enter politics and reshape the political landscape. We have to find a way to bring civil society back into politics.
It is only the combined weight of civil society organised politically which has the strength to cow the lumpen. It is only by organised society isolating and cowing the lumpen that they can be defeated. It is only by defeating the lumpen that we can break up the garrisons. So the entire problem reduces itself to this: how to bring the organised working class (Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, University and Allied Workers Union, National Workers Union (NWU) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the organised middle classes (Jamaica Exporters' Association, Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, Jamaica Teachers' Association, Kiwanis, Rotary, Jamaica Manufacturers' Association), the organised business community (Private Sector Association of Jamaica, JMA, Jamaica Employers' Federation)-Rasta and baldhead back into active politics in Jamaica.
ABHOR POLITICS
Obviously this is not going to happen directly nor easily. Most able people of integrity from these bodies rightly abhor the thought of entering Jamaican politics as it is. But it can happen indirectly. What is needed is to take a leaf out of our early political history. We need to form independent intermediate organisations with their own written publications just as how the citizens' associations and the journal Public Opinion preceded the formation of the PNP. These organisations should not strive to become parties although they are certain to have their political inclinations. But they should strive to remain broad-based political pressure groups located in civil society.
To some extent, this process has already begun. The G2K group affiliated to the JLP is a case in point. This is an intermediate group which is not a party but which reaches out to a wider population interested in politics but unwilling or unable to enter it directly. The PNP has tried to do likewise but has failed so far.
PLASTIC SOLUTION
The problem with both these efforts, however, is that they are too closely tied to the existing political parties not independent enough. They do not seem to be based on any particular political idea or orientation. They are simply a collection of young people from a particular family background who have inherited a certain party orientation. What they stand for apart from personal ambition nobody, least of all themselves, seems to know. A shallow trendiness and sense of privilege oozes from every pore. Their 'ideas' if one can call them such seem to spring from the latest airport book which somebody picked up while hanging around in Miami airport waiting on a flight home. Jamaica's problems, as with much of the developing world, are seriously tough ones not amenable to such plastic 'solutions'.
LADDER FOR OPPORTUNISTS
They thus are never critical of the parties to which they are informally affiliated because they have no perspective from which to be critical. They become simply an extension of the parties or a ladder for the opportunist elements which abound in Jamaica to climb up on. The closest we have come to a genuinely intermediate and independent organisation in recent times is the Partnership for Progress forum organised by the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica. This now needs to be broadened to take up issues which go beyond the macroeconomic challenges and also to be broadened socially.
What currently exists in terms of intermediate organisations is certainly a vital step forward. But we can and need to go much further if we are to renew our political culture and institutions. New intermediate organisations will fail if they are not genuinely intermediate, independent and based on clear political principles, whether conservative or progressive. They also need to be socially broad-based. They have to be representative of the healthy forces in civil society. They have to have the ability to criticise all parties objectively if they are to subjugate the lumpen. Any other approach is just tribalism-lite - a 'version' of the narrowness which already exists. Is there a political leader out there somewhere who has the vision, integrity and grit to foster this opening up of our political culture? I sometimes get the feeling that Mr. Golding has this vision. But who, if anyone, on the PNP side?
